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Transnational Historical Perspectives on Social Policy

Globalization and Welfare series

Edited by Pauli Kettunen and Klaus Petersen

Welfare state models have for decades been the gold standard of welfare state research. Beyond Welfare State Models escapes the straitjacket of conventional welfare state models and challenges the existing literature in two ways. Firstly the contributors argue that the standard typologies have omitted important aspects of welfare state development. Secondly, the work develops and underlines the importance of a more fluid transnational conceptualisation. As this book shows, welfare states are not created in national isolation but are heavily influenced by transnational economic, political and cultural interdependencies. The authors illustrate these important points of criticism with their studies on the transnational history of social policy, religion and the welfare state, Nordic cooperation within the fields of social policy and marriage law, and the transnational contexts of national family policies.

Chapter 3: National, Nordic and trans-Nordic: transnational perspectives on the history of the Nordic welfare states

Monograph Chapter

Extract

3. National, Nordic and trans-Nordic: transnational perspectives on the history of the Nordic welfare states Klaus Petersen Social policy was not created by the bumping of impenetrable billiard balls of power, but by men who could learn and whose viewpoints could change. (Heclo 1974: 321) The Northern countries have frequently been likened to a social laboratory, a place of experiments and research. In a sense this illustration is rather apt. Some experiments are successful while others fail – but work is continuous and the solution of one problem often serves to shed light upon others still unsolved. There is no such thing as a terminus for social policy. Conditions change, as do ideas, and social problems and requirements change with them. (Nelson 1953: 501. Published on behalf of the Nordic ministers of social affairs) INTRODUCTION It is well established that the welfare state has become an integral part of the national identities in the Nordic countries. Danes, Finns, Icelanders, Norwegians and Swedes gladly use the concept as a synonym of their contemporary societies. More interesting is that in these national discourses we also find unproblematic notions of the ‘Nordic welfare state’ as a point of reference or even as a figure used to describe the national social security systems and societies. But this apparently happy marriage between the national and transnational perspective raises a number of questions: How was the notion of a specific Nordic model welfare constructed and by whom? What was historically the relationship between the Nordic and the...

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